Ooh, bona! It’s the 58th anniversary of the first episode of Round the Horne, the radio sketch show that brought us (from the fourth episode onwards) the fantabulosa Julian and Sandy.
Jules (Hugh Paddick) and Sand (Kenneth Williams) were resting actors, “filling in between engagements” in a variety of jobs. In their first outing, for example, Rentachap, they were domestic servants.
Their day jobs, though, like their chosen career, were not the most important thing about them. Julian and Sandy were notable for being as camp as Butlins in a show that started two years before homosexuality was (partially) decriminalised.
Writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman brought not just double entendre, but also Polari, introducing a mainstream audience to such sentences as:
He’s a great butch omee, he’s got these thews like an oak, and bulging lallies.
…which meant “He’s a big, butch man, with muscular forearms and legs.” Most of the audience didn’t have a clue what this meant, but it sounded funny and a bit saucy, and they took the characters to their hearts. And people in the know understood…
Polari allowed them to get a reference to arseholes onto BBC primetime. When Julian says he can’t possibly wash up in Horne’s kitchen because “all the dishes are dirty”, most of the audience would have got the fact that ‘dish’ meant ‘attractive man’. Kenneth Williams’ improvised response, though — “Speak for yourself!” — plays on the fact that in Polari, ‘dish’ can also mean anus (and I think it bears repeating that this was going out on the Light Programme at 2.30 on a Sunday afternoon in 1965).
As the splendid Lancaster University website about Polari — which goes by the fine name Fabulosa! — says:
At a time when homosexuality was illegal and gay characters were either absent or were cast as tragic or villainous, Julian and Sandy were cheerfully gay, gliding past the censors by using a mixture of camp innuendo and Polari.
In a sketch where the boys are solicitors, for example, Horne asks “Will you take my case?”, which earns him the magnificent response:
Well, it depends on what it is. We’ve got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.
A discussion of international travel gave us:
SANDY: Don’t mention Málaga to Julian, he got very badly stung.
HORNE: Portuguese man o’ war?
JULIAN: Well I never saw him in uniform…
Perhaps their finest moment, though (for me at least), was in Bona Song Publisherettes when Kenneth Williams’ Sandy informs Mr Horne that Julian is a gifted pianist with the words:
He’s a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you — it’s been bona to vada your dolly old eeks again, and if you want to find out more about Polari, troll over to Paul Baker at Lancaster’s splendid website.
There’s more on the BBC and Liverpool Museums, among others.
